Friday

Aug 14, 2015 at 2:13 PM

The Department for Children and Families hopes to bring in millions of dollars in new child support collections through an advertising campaign that will urge businesses to report new hires for collection purposes.

The agency said a "large percentage" of employers don’t currently report their new hires despite a legal requirement to do so. Officials couldn’t provide an exact percentage, however.

DCF, along with the Department of Labor, announced the advertising offensive at a news conference Friday. Kansas provides no penalties for businesses that don’t report new hires, leaving the state little recourse beyond asking employers to comply.

Kansas law currently requires employers to provide the names of newly hired workers to DOL within 20 days of the hire. The workers are checked against a list of individuals owing support, and if a positive match is reported, the state begins withholding support from the worker’s paycheck.

"When employers report their new hires in a timely fashion, it also helps cut down on fraud, and we’ve made a big focus on helping to prevent and combat fraud in our division," Labor Secretary Lana Gordon said.

Officials said about 20,000 employers currently report. The number, and percentage, of those that don’t is harder to come by.

Trisha Thomas, DCF child support services director, said employers are typically only notified of the requirement to report new hires when they become a business. The advertising campaign is about educating businesses, she said.

"We look at our current support based around other states and we’ve seen in other states, once you get a larger number reporting, you get a substantial increase in child support collections based upon more income withholdings and more new hires," Thomas said.

The campaign has a budget of about $50,000, but more could be invested if it is found to be effective. The advertisements feature bright colors and several taglines. One tagline reads: "You can’t make sure Kansas kids get to school on time. But you can make sure they have the support they need."

The advertising campaign comes after Kansas privatized its child support collection system in 2013. After the first year of privatization, Kansas did a worse job collecting current child support than before privatization — and the percentage of current support collected stood at a 14-year low.

In federal fiscal year 2014, 54.04 percent of current support due was collected. In 2013 the state had a 55.79 percent collection rate.

The state also collected less current support dollars in FFY 2014 than FFY 2013, despite the amount of current support due growing. About $130.6 million in current support was collected in 2014, compared with $134.5 million in 2013. But the amount of current support due rose from $241.09 million in 2013 to $241.7 million in 2014.

DCF officials have said the focus since privatization has been on cost-effectiveness and that the agency is now turning to increasing overall collections.

Indeed, the cost-effectiveness ratio has increased since privatization. In 2014, DCF collected $5.89 in support for every $1 spent. That is up from $4.12 in 2013 and $3.76 in 2012.

DCF also said its numbers for 2015 are up so far. Thomas said collections for the current year exceed numbers for last year in total collections even as the state has several thousand less child support cases.

"The cases under order, we’re excited to say that number has gone up from 83.4 percent to now it’s 87.6 percent. So pretty substantial," Thomas said.

Since 2000, the percentage of cases with support orders has risen from 49 percent to more than 80 percent.

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